ANOTHER INSTITUTIONALIZATION:LATIN AMERICA AND ELSEWHERE

Guillermo O’Donnell

Working Paper #222 - March 1996

Guillermo O’Donnell, Helen Kellogg Professor of Government and International Studies, isAcademic Director of the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of NotreDame.

This is a revised version of a paper presented to the conference on “Consolidating Third WaveDemocracies: Trends and Challenges,” organized by the National Policy Research Institute andthe International Forum for Democratic Studies, Taipei, 26–30 August 1995. An abridged versionis published in the Journal of Democracy, April 1996. For their comments on a previous draft, theauthor is grateful to Michael Coppedge, Larry Diamond, Gabriela Ippolito-O'Donnell, ScottMainwaring, Sebastián Mazzuca, Peter Moody, Gerardo Munck, and Adam Przeworski.

ABSTRACT

The paper expresses skepticism about concepts current in the contemporary literature ondemocratization, such as ‘democratic consolidation’ and/or the ‘lack of institutionalization’ fromwhich most of the new democracies supposedly suffer. The further claim is made that thesedemocracies—or ‘polyarchies’, to use the term preferred here—have, in fact, two very importantinstitutions, elections and particularism/clientelism, which are not generally recognized as suchdue to the narrow way in which political scientists usually conceptualize institutions. Finally, thepaper traces some correlates and elective affinities resulting from what it labels ‘informalinstitutionalization.’ The main argument is that, in order to contribute to improving the quality ofmany of the new polyarchies, analysts must describe their main features realistically, whichrequires moving well beyond merely negative characterizations limited to what these countriesseem to lack in comparison with older polyarchies.

RESUMEN

El texto expresa escepticismo en relación con conceptos, corrientes en la literaturacontemporánea sobre democratización, tales como “consolidación de la democracia” y/o laaparente “falta de institutionalización que aparentemente padecen muchas de las nuevasdemocracias. El texto argumenta, además, que estas democracias—o poliarquías—tienen dosinstituciones sumamente importante, las elecciones y un difundido particularismo/clientelismo. Elproblema es que estas instituciones no suelen ser reconocidas como tales, debido a la estrechamanera con que la ciencia política suele conceptualizar las instituciones. Finalmente, el textotraza algunas correlaciones y afinidades electivas resultantes de lo que llama la“institucionalización informal” de esas poliarquías. El principal argumento es que, para contribuir amejorar la calidad de muchas de esas poliarquías, es necesario comenzar por describirrealistamente sus principales características. Esto requiere superar caracterizaciones puramentenegativas, basadas en los atributos de que aquellas parecen carecer cuando comparadas con lasviejas poliarquías.

Introduction

Democracies used to be few in number, and most were located in the northwestern

quarter of the world. Over the last two decades, however, many countries rid themselves of

authoritarian regimes. There are many variations among these countries. Some of them have

reverted to new brands of authoritarianism (even if from time to time they hold elections), and a

few others have clearly embraced democracy. Still many others seem to inhabit a grey area; they

bear a family resemblance to the old-established democracies but they either lack or only

precariously possess some key attributes of the latter. The bulk of the contemporary literature

tells us that these somehow ‘incomplete’ democracies are failing to become consolidated or

institutionalized.

This poses two tasks. One is to establish a cutoff point that separates all democracies

from nondemocracies. This point’s location depends on the questions we ask, and so is always

arbitrary. Many definitions of democracy have been offered.i The one I find especially useful is

Robert Dahl’s concept of polyarchy. Once a reasonably well-delimited set of democracies is

obtained, the second task is to examine the criteria that a given stream of the scholarly literature

uses for comparing casesii within this set. If the criteria are found wanting, the next step is to

propose alternative concepts for these comparisons. This is what I attempt here, albeit in

preliminary and schematic fashion.

Contemporary Latin America is my empirical referent, although my discussion probably

also applies to various newly democratized countries in other parts of the world. I do not survey in

any detail the present situation of newly democratized, or redemocratized, Latin American

countries; recent studies have done this very well.iii My main argument in this paper is that,

i Reflecting the lack of clearly established criteria in the literature, David Collier and StevenLevistky have inventoried and interestingly discussed the more than one hundred qualifiersattached to the term ‘democracy,’ many of them intended to indicate that the respective cases arein some sense lacking the full attributes of democracy as defined by each author; see their“Democracy ‘with Adjectives’: Finding Conceptual Order in Recent Comparative Research,”University of California, Berkeley, Department of Political Science, multicopied.ii More precisely, groups of cases, or subtypes, within this set.iii For excellent general surveys, see Larry Diamond, “Democracy in Latin America: Degrees,Illusions, and Directions for Consolidation,” in Tom Farer, ed., Beyond Sovereignty: CollectivelyDefending Democracy in the Americas (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 1995), andthe 1994 proceedings of a conference held at the University of Notre Dame as part of “ProjectLatin America 2000” of the Helen Kellogg Institute for International Studies: CatherineConaghan, “Democracy that Matters: The Search for Authenticity, Legitimacy, and CivicCompetence in the Andes,” Kellogg Institute, Project Latin America 2000 series Working Paper

contrary to what most of current scholarship holds, the problem with many new polyarchies is not

that they lack institutionalization. Rather, the way in which political scientists usually conceptualize

some institutions prevents us from recognizing that these polyarchies actually have two extremely

important institutions. One is highly formalized but intermittent: elections. The other is informal,

permanent, and pervasive: particularism (or clientelism, broadly defined). An important fact is that,

in contrast to previous periods of authoritarian rule, particularism now exists in uneasy tension with

the formal rules and institutions of what I call the ‘full institutional package’ of polyarchy. These

arguments open up a series of issues that in future publications I will analyze with the detail and

nuance they deserve. My purpose at present is to furnish some elements for what I believe are

needed revisions in the conceptual and comparative agenda for the study of all existing

polyarchies, especially those that are informally institutionalized.iv

Polyarchy, as defined by Dahl,v has seven attributes:

1. elected officials; 5. freedom of expression;2. free and fair elections; 6. alternative information;3. inclusive suffrage; 7. associational autonomy.4. right to run for office;

Attributes 1 to 4 tell us that a basic aspect of polyarchy is that elections are inclusive, fair, and

competitive. Attributes 5 to 7 refer to political and social freedoms that are minimally necessary not

only during but also between elections as a condition for elections to be fair and competitive.

According to these criteria, some countries of Latin America currently are not polyarchies: The

#1; Scott Mainwaring, “Democracy in Brazil and the Southern Cone: Achievements andProblems,” Working Paper #2; Laurence Whitehead, “The Peculiarities of ‘Transition’ a lamexicana,” Working Paper #4; and Terry L. Karl, “Central America in the Twenty-First Century: TheProspects for a Democratic Region,” Working Paper #5 (these papers are available upon requestfrom the Kellogg Institute, Notre Dame, IN 46566-5677). See also Scott Mainwaring, GuillermoO’Donnell, and J. Samuel Valenzuela, eds., Issues in Democratic Consolidation: The New SouthAmerican Democracies in Comparative Perspective (University of Notre Dame Press, 1992). iv I have tried unsuccessfully to find terms appropriate to what the literature refers as highly vs.noninstitutionalized (or poorly institutionalized) or as consolidated vs. unconsolidated democ-racies, with most of the old polyarchies belonging to the first terms of these pairs and most of thenew ones to the second. For reasons that will be clear below, I have opted for labelling the firstgroup ‘formally institutionalized’ and the second ‘informally institutionalized,’ but not withoutmisgivings: in the first set of countries many things happen outside formally prescribedinstitutional rules, while the second set includes one highly formalized institution, elections.v This list is from Robert Dahl, Democracy and Its Critics (New Haven: Yale University Press,1989), 221; the reader may want to examine further details of these attributes, discussed by Dahlin this book. An interesting attempt at operationalizing polyarchy in a comparative perspective isMichael Coppedge and Wolfgang Reinicke, “Measuring Polyarchy,” Studies in ComparativeInternational Development 25, #1 (Spring 1990) 51–72.

Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Mexico have recently held elections, but they have been marred

by serious irregularities before, during, and after voting.

Other attributes need to be added to Dahl’s list. One is that elected (and some

appointed) officials should not be arbitrarily terminated before the end of their constitutionally

dictated terms.vi A second addition is that the elected authorities should not be subject to severe

constraints, or vetoes, or exclusion from certain policy domains by other, nonelected actors,

especially the armed forces.vii In this sense, Guatemala and Paraguay, as well as probably El

Salvador and Honduras, do not qualify as polyarchies.viii Chile is an odd case, where restrictions

of this sort are part of the constitution inherited from the authoritarian regime. But Chile clearly

meets Dahl’s seven criteria of polyarchy. Peru is another doubtful case, since the 1995

presidential elections were not untarnished and the armed forces retain tutelary powers over

various policy areas. Third, there should be an uncontested national territory that clearly defines

the voting population.ix Finally, an appropriate definition of polyarchy should also include an

intertemporal dimension: the generalized expectation that a fair electoral process and its

surrounding freedoms will continue into an indefinite future.

These criteria leave us with the three polyarchies—Colombia, Costa Rica, and

Venezuela—whose origins date from before the wave of democratization that began in the mid-

1970s, and with nine others that resulted from this wave: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador,

Nicaragua, Panama, Uruguay and, with the caveats noted, Chile and Peru. But only in the oldest

Latin American polyarchy, Costa Rica, and in two cases of redemocratization, Chile and Uruguay,

vi This and the following additions to the concept of polyarchy show that some of theassumptions or omissions of theories of democracy need to be made explicit if these theories areto aptly travel outside of the Northwestern quadrant of the world. Fujimori and Yeltsin may havebeen elected in fair elections, but they abolished polyarchy when they forcefully closed congressand fired the supreme court.vii See, especially, J. Samuel Valenzuela, “Democratic Consolidation in Post-TransitionalSettings: Notion, Process, and Facilitating Conditions,” in Mainwaring, O’Donnell, andValenzuela, Issues in Democratic Consolidation, op. cit. (n. 3); and Philippe Schmitter and TerryLynn Karl, “What Democracy Is…and Is Not,” Journal of Democracy 2, #3 (Summer 1991) 75–88.Another necessary addition to Dahl’s criterion about elected officials, less significant for mypurposes, is the caveat obviously needed with respect to some important officials who in mostpolyarchies are not elected: judges of the supreme and other courts.viii See Terry L. Karl, “The Hybrid Regimes of Central America,” Journal of Democracy 6, #3 (July1995) 73–86, and “Imposing Consent? Electoralism vs. Democratization in El Salvador,” in PaulDrake and Eduardo Silva, eds., Elections and Democratization in Latin America, 1980–85 (SanDiego: Center for Iberian and Latin American Studies: 1986) 9–36.ix See, especially, Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan, Problems of Democratic Consolidation:Southern Europe, South America, and Postcommunist Europe (Baltimore: The John HopkinsUniversity Press, forthcoming); and Philippe Schmitter, “Dangers and Dilemmas of Democracy,”Journal of Democracy 5, #2 (April 1994) 57–74.

do the executive branch, congress, parties, and the judiciary function in a manner that is

reasonably close to their formal institutional rules, making them effective institutional knots in the

flow of political power and policy.x Colombia and Venezuela used to function like this but do so

no longer.xi These two countries, jointly with Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Ecuador, Nicaragua,

Panama, and Peru—a set that includes a large majority of the Latin American population and

GNP—function in ways that current democratic theory has ill prepared us to understand.

We must go back to the definition of polyarchy. This definition, precise in regard to

elections (attributes 1 to 4) and rather generic (attributes 5 to 7) about contextual freedoms, is

mute with respect to institutional features such as parliamentarism or presidentialism, centralism or

federalism, majoritarianism or consensualism, and the existence or not of a written constitution

and judicial review. Also, the definition of polyarchy is silent about important but elusive themes

such as if, how, and to what degree governments are responsive and/or accountable to citizens

between elections, and the degree to which the rule of law extends over the country’s

geographical and social terrain.xii These silences are appropriate: the definition of polyarchy, let

us recall, establishes a crucial cutting point—one that separates cases where there exist inclusive,

fair, and competitive elections and basic accompanying freedoms from all others, including not

only unabashed authoritarian regimes but also countries that hold elections but lack some of the

characteristics that jointly define polyarchy.

Among polyarchies, however, there are many variations. These differences are empirical,

but they can also be normatively evaluated and their likely effect on the survival prospects of each

polyarchy may be eventually assessed. These are important issues that merit conceptual

clarification.

By definition, all the Latin American cases that I have labeled polyarchies are such

because of a simple but crucial fact: elections are institutionalized. By an institution I mean a

regularized pattern of interaction that is known, practiced, and accepted (if not necessarily

approved) by actors who expect to continue interacting under the rules sanctioned and backed

x But we should note that in Uruguay and in Chile there exist severe constraints on theapplication of the law to armed forces’ personnel. This is an important gap in the universalizationof the rule of law which, in Latin America, only Costa Rica has bridged.xi For recent analyses of these countries, see Catherine Conaghan, “Democracy that Matters,”op. cit. (n. 3); Michael Coppedge, “Venezuela’s Vulnerable Democracy,” Journal of Democracy 3,#4 (October 1992) 32–44; and Michael Gold-Biss, “Colombia: Understanding Recent DemocraticTransformations in a Violent Polity,” Latin American Research Review 28, #1 (1993) 215–34.xii For a useful listing of these institutional variations, see Schmitter and Karl, “What DemocracyIs...and Is Not,” op. cit. (n. 7).

by that pattern.xiii As sociological views stress,xiv institutions are taken for granted, in their

existence and continuity, by the actors who interact with and through them. Institutions “are

there,” regulating expectations and behavior that usually do not question their socially given

existence. Sometimes institutions become complex organizations: they are supposed to

operate under highly formalized and explicit rules and materialize in buildings, rituals, and officials.

These are the institutions on which both “prebehavioral” and most of contemporary

neoinstitutionalist political science focus. An unusual characteristic of elections qua institutions is

that they are highly formalized by very detailed and explicit rules but function intermittently and do

not always have a permanent organizational embodiment.

In all polyarchies, old and new, elections are institutionalized, both in themselves and in

the reasonablexv effectiveness of the surrounding conditions of freedom of expression, access

to alternative information, and associational autonomy. Leaders and voters take for granted that in

the future inclusive, fair, and competitive elections will take place as legally scheduled, voters will

be properly registered and free from physical coercion, and their votes will be counted fairly. It is

also taken for granted that the winners will take office and will not have their terms arbitrarily

terminated. Furthermore, for this electoral process to exist, freedom of opinion and of association

(including forming political parties) and an uncensored media must also exist. Countries where

elections do not have these characteristics do not qualify as polyarchies.xvi

Most students of democratization agree that many of the new polyarchies are at best

poorly institutionalized. Few of them seem to have institutionalized anything aside from elections,

at least in terms of what one would expect from looking at somexvii of the old polyarchies. But

appearances can be misleading, since other institutions may exist, even though they may not be

the ones most of us would prefer or easily recognize.

xiii For a more detailed discussion of institutions, see my “Delegative Democracy,” Journal ofDemocracy 5, #1 (January 1994) 56–69.xiv See, especially, Ronald L. Jepperson, “Institutions, Institutional Effects, andInstitutionalism,” in Paul J. DiMaggio and Walter W. Powell, eds., The New Institutionalism inOrganizational Analysis (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1992) 143–63.xv The term ‘reasonable’ is admittedly ambiguous. Nowhere are these freedoms completelyuncurtailed, if nothing else by the political consequences of social inequality. By ‘reasonable’ Imean that there are no de jure prohibitions on these freedoms nor systematic and usuallysuccessful efforts by the government or private actors to annul them.xvi On the other hand, elections can be made more authentically competitive by, say, measuresthat diminish the advantages of incumbents or of economically powerful parties. These are, ofcourse, important issues. But the point I want to make at the moment is that these differencesobtain among countries that already qualify as polyarchies.xvii The caveat implied by the term ‘some’ will be clarified below.

Doubts about ‘Consolidation’

When elections and their surrounding freedoms are institutionalized, it might be said that

polyarchy (or political democracy) is ‘consolidated,’ i.e., likely to endure. This, jointly with the

proviso of absence of veto powers over elected authorities, is the influential definition of

‘democratic consolidation’ offered by Juan Linz, who calls it a state of affairs “in which none of the

major political actors, parties, or organized interests, forces, or institutions consider that there is

any alternative to democratic processes to gain power, and...no political institution or group has a

claim to veto the action of democratically elected decision makers... To put it simply, democracy

must be seen as the ‘only game in town’.”xviii This minimalist definition has important advantages.

Still, I do not see much analytical gain in attaching the term ‘consolidated’ to something that will

probably though not certainly endure—‘democracy’ and ‘consolidation’ are terms too polysemous

to make a good pair.

Other authors offer more expanded definitions of democratic consolidation, many of them

centered on the achievement of a high degree of ‘institutionalization.’xix Usually these

definitions do not see elections as an institution.xx They focus on complex organizations,

basically the executive, parties and congress, and sometimes the judiciary. Several valuable

studies have been conducted from this point of view. However, by the very logic of their

assessment of many new polyarchies as noninstitutionalized, these studies presuppose, as their

comparative yardstick, a generic and somewhat idealized view of the old polyarchies. To begin

with, I declare my perplexity about what this yardstick really means: it is unclear whether it is

something like an average of characteristics observed within the set of old polyarchies, or an ideal

xviii Juan Linz, “Transitions to Democracy,” Washington Quarterly 13, #3 (1990) 156; theassertion about “the only game in town” entails some ambiguities that I discuss below.xix Even though most definitions of democratic consolidation are centered around‘institutionalization’ (whether explicitly or implicitly, by asserting acceptance and/or approval ofdemocratic institutions and their formal rules), they offer a wide variety of additional criteria. Myown count in a recent review of the literature is twelve; see Doh Chull Sin, “On the Third Wave ofDemocratization: A Synthesis and Evaluation of Recent Theory and Research,” World Politics 47(October 1994) 135–70. Some of these criteria are quite demanding, such as the achievement of“substantial, principled consensus” about democracy among leaders, or “elite consensus onprocedures coupled with extensive mass participation in elections and other institutionalprocesses,” or democracy becoming “broadly and profoundly legitimate,” or when “acceptance ofa given set of constitutional rules becomes increasingly widespread, valued, and routinized,” orwhen a democratic political culture emerges (see Sin, op. cit., 144 ff., and the sources citedtherein).xx An exception is the definition of democratic consolidation offered by J. Samuel Valenzuela,which is centered on what I call here the institutionalization of elections and the absence of vetopowers; see, by this author, “Democratic Consolidation in Post-Transitional Settings,” op. cit. (n.7), 69.

type generated from some of these characteristics, or a generalization of the characteristics of

some of its members to the whole set, or a normative statement of preferred traits. Furthermore,

this mode of reasoning carries a strong teleological flavor. Cases that have not ‘arrived’ at full

institutionalization, or that do not seem to be moving in this direction, are seen as stunted,xxi

frozen, protractedly unconsolidated, and the like. Such a view presupposes that there are, or

should be, factors operating in the direction of increasing consolidation or institutionalization, but

that countervailing ‘obstacles’ stymie a process of change that otherwise would operate

unfettered.xxii That some of these polyarchies have been in a state of ‘protracted

unconsolidation’xxiii already for some twenty years suggests that there is something extremely

odd with this kind of thinking.

A recently published book on democratic consolidation in Southern Europe is a case in

point.xxiv This is the first of a series of five volumes, resulting from an eight-year project that

involved, as coauthors and discussants, many of the most active and distinguished students of

democratization. As stated in the Introduction to this volume, the purpose of this project is “(1) To

engage in a systematic study of the nature of democratic consolidation in Greece, Portugal,

Spain, and postfascist Italy...and (2) To use the insights derived from this regional case study to

contribute to the emergent, more general, theoretical debate concerning the properties of, and

the processes involved in, the consolidation of democracy.” The “Introduction” (1–32) and the

“Conclusions” (389–413) by the coeditors and codirectors of the project offer an impressively

learned distillation of these extensive scholarly exchanges. These texts are also paradigmatic of

the views I am criticizing. The editors use the concept of “trajectories of democratic transitions and

xxi It is high time for self-criticism. The term ‘stunted’ I used jointly with Scott Mainwaring andSamuel Valenzuela in the “Introduction” to our Issues in Democratic Consolidation, op. cit. (n. 3),11. Furthermore, in my chapter in this volume (17–56), I offer a nonminimalist definition ofdemocratic consolidation and propose the concept of a “second transition,” from a democraticallyelected government to a consolidated democratic regime. These concepts partake of theteleology I criticize here.xxii This teleological view is homologous to the one used by many modernization studies in the1950s and 1960s; it was abundantly, but evidently not decisively, criticized at the time. For acritique of the concept of ‘democratic consolidation’ that is convergent with mine, see Ben RossSchneider, “Democratic Consolidations: Some Broad Comparisons and Sweeping Arguments,”Latin American Research Review 30, #2 (1995) 215–34, in which he concludes (231) by warningagainst “the fallacy of excessive universalism.”xxiii Philippe Schmitter with Terry Karl, “The Conceptual Travels of Transitologists andConsolidologists: How Far to the East Should They Attempt to Go?” Slavic Review 63 (spring1994) 173–85.xxiv Richard Gunther, P. Nikiforos Diamandouros, and Hans-Jürgen Puhle, eds., The Politics ofDemocratic Consolidation: Southern Europe in Comparative Perspective (Baltimore: The JohnHopkins University Press, 1995).

consolidations” with which, even though they warn that it “should in no way be understood as

implying a deterministic conceptual bias,” they intend to “capture and highlight the particular

combination and interplay of freedom and constraint at each successive stage of the

democratization process” (xvi, emphasis added). Further on they state that “We regard continued

movement towards the ideal type of democratic consolidation as very significant” (9, emphasis

added). Consistently with this view—in contrast to Southern European countries that the authors

say became consolidated democracies in part because they have “leap-frogged” democratization

and developmental stages—most of Latin America is seen as “still struggling with transitional

problems of varying, and often major, magnitude and intensity” (xiv–xvi, emphasis added). An

exception is Chile, where the transition is “moving towards consolidation” (19, emphasis added)

and “seems to be well on its way to successful completion” (389, emphasis added). On their part,

after achieving consolidation, the Southern European countries seem, according to these

authors, to be entering into still another stage, that of “democratic persistence,” which is the “end

product of a long democratization process” (xiii, passim).

One way or the other, polyarchies that are seen as unconsolidated, noninstitutionalized,

or poorly institutionalized are defined negatively, for what they lack: the type and degree of

institutionalization presumably achieved by old polyarchies. Yet negative definitions focus

attention away from building typologies of polyarchies on the basis of the specific, positively

described traits of each type.xxv Such typologies are needed, among other purposes, for

assessing each type’s likelihood of endurance, for exploring its patterns of change, and for

clarifying the various dimensions on which issues of quality and performance of polyarchy may be

discussed and researched.

There is no theory that would tell us why and how the new polyarchies that have

institutionalized elections will ‘complete’ their institutional set or otherwise become ‘consolidated.’

All we can say at the present is that, as long as elections are institutionalized, polyarchies are likely

to endure. We can add the hypothesis that this likelihood is greater for polyarchies that are

formally institutionalized. But this proposition is not terribly interesting unless we take into

xxv We should remember that several typologies have been proposed for formallyinstitutionalized polyarchies; see, especially, Arend Lijphart, Democracies. Patterns of Majoritarianand Consensus Government in Twenty Countries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984). Thiswork has been extremely useful in advancing knowledge about these polyarchies, whichunderscores the need for similar efforts on the now greatly expanded whole set of polyarchies.For an attempt in this direction, see Carlos Acuña and William Smith, “Future Politico-EconomicScenarios for Latin America,” in William Smith, Carlos Acuña, and Eduardo Gamarra, eds.,Democracy, Markets, and Structural Reform in Latin America (New Brunswick: TransactionPublishers 1993) 1–28.

account other factors that most likely have strong independent effects on the chances of survival

of polyarchies.xxvi Consequently, calling some polyarchies ‘consolidated’ or ‘highly

institutionalized’ may be no more than saying that they are institutionalized in ways that one

expects and approves. Without a theory of how and why this may happen, it is at best premature

to expect that newer polyarchies will or should become ‘consolidated’ or ‘highly institutionalized.’

In any event, such a theory can only be elaborated on the basis of a positive description of the

main traits of the pertinent cases.

Informal Rules

Polyarchy is the happy result of centuries-long processes, mostly in countries in the

Northwest. In spite of many variations among these countries, polyarchy is embodied in an

institutional package: a set of rules and institutions (many of them complex organizations) that is

usually explicitly formalized in constitutions and auxiliary legislation. Rules are supposed to guide

how individuals in institutions and individuals interacting with institutions behave. The extent to

which behavior and expectations hew to or deviate from their formal rules is difficult to gauge

empirically. But when the fit is reasonably close, formal rules simplify our task; they are good

predictors of behavior and expectations. In this case one may conclude that all or most of the

formal rules and institutions of polyarchy are fully, or close to fully, institutionalized.xxvii When the

fit is loose or practically nonexistent, we are confronted with the double task of describing actual

behavior and of finding out the (usually informal) rules that behavior and expectations do follow.

Actors are as rational in these settings as in highly formalized ones, but the contours of their

rationality cannot be traced without knowing the actual rules, and the common knowledge of

these rules, that they follow. One may define this situation negatively, solely in terms of the lack of

xxvi Adam Przeworski and his collaborators found that higher economic development and aparliamentary regime increase the average survival rate of polyarchies. These are importantfindings, but the authors have not tested the impacts of socioeconomic inequality and of the kindof informal institutionalization I discuss below. Pending further research, it is impossible to assessthe causal direction and weight of all these variables. I suspect that high socioeconomic inequalityhas a close relationship with informal institutionalization. But we do not know if either or both,directly or indirectly, affect the chances of survival of polyarchy, or if they might cancel the effect ofeconomic development that Przeworski et al. found. See Adam Przeworski and FernandoLimongi, “Modernization: Theories and Facts,” Chicago Center for Democracy, University ofChicago, Working Paper #4 (November 1994), multicopied; and Adam Przeworski, MichaelAlvarez, José Antonio Cheibub, and Fernando Limongi, “What Makes Democracies Endure,”Journal of Democracy 7 (January 1996) 39–55.xxvii A topic that does not concern me here is the extent to which formal rules are institutionalizedacross various old polyarchies and, within them, across various issue areas, though the variationsseem quite important on both counts.

fit between formal rules and observed behavior. As anthropologists have long known, however,

this is no substitute for studying the actual rules that are being followed; nor does it authorize the

assumption that somehow there is a tendency toward increasing compliance with formal rules.

This is especially true when informal rules are widely shared and deeply rooted; in this case, it may

be said that it is these rules that are highly institutionalized, not the formal ones.xxviii

To some extent this also happens in the old polyarchies. The various laments, from all

sides of the ideological spectrum, about the decay of democracy in these countries is largely a

consequence of the visible and apparently increasing gap between formal rules and the behavior

of all sorts of political actors. But the gap is even larger in many new polyarchies, where the formal

rules about how political institutions are supposed to work are often poor guides to what actually

happens.

Many new polyarchies do not lack institutionalization, but a fixation on highly formalized

and complex organizations prevents one from seeing an extremely influential, informal and

sometimes concealed, institution: clientelism and, more generally, particularism. For brevity’s

sake, I will put details and nuances asidexxix and use these terms to refer broadly to various sorts

of nonuniversalistic relationships, ranging from hierarchical particularistic exchanges, patronage,

xxviii The lore of many countries is filled with jokes about the naive foreigner or the nativesucker who get in trouble by following the formal rules of a given situation. I have explored someof these issues with reference to Brazil and Argentina in “Democracia en la Argentina: Micro yMacro,” Working Paper, #2 (Notre Dame: Kellogg Institute, 1983); “Y a mí qué me importa? Notassobre sociabilidad y política en Argentina y Brasil,” Working Paper #9 (Notre Dame: KelloggInstitute, 1984); and “Micro-escenas de la privatización de lo público en São Paulo,” WorkingPaper #121, with commentaries by Roberto DaMatta and J. Samuel Valenzuela (Notre Dame:Kellogg Institute, 1989).xxix For the purposes of the generic argument I present in this essay, and not without hesitationbecause of its vagueness, from now on I will use from now on the term ‘particularism’ to refer tothese phenomena. For recent studies of the contemporary relevance of clientelism, see LuisRoniger and Ayse Gunes-Ayata, eds., Democracy, Clientelism, and Civil Society (Boulder: LynneRienner Publishers, 1994). For studies focused on Latin America that are particularly germane tomy argument, see, especially, Roberto DaMatta, A casa e a rua. Espaço, cidadania, mulher e morteno Brasil (São Paulo: Editora Brasiliense, 1985); Jonathan Fox, “The Difficult Transition fromClientelism to Citizenship,” World Politics 46, #2 (January 1994) 151–84; Francis Hagopian, “TheCompromised Transition: The Political Class in the Brazilian Transition” in Mainwaring, O’Donnell,and Valenzuela, Issues in Democratic Consolidation, op. cit. (n. 3), 243-93; and Scott Mainwaring,“Brazilian Party Underdevelopment in Comparative Perspective,” Political Science Quarterly 107,#4 (Winter 1992–93), 677–707. These and other studies show that particularism and itsconcomitants are not ignored by good field researchers. But, attesting to the paradigmatic forceof the prevalent views on democratization, in the literature I am discussing the rich data andfindings emerging from such case studies are not conceptually processed as an intrinsic part ofthe problématique of democratization or are seen as just ‘obstacles’ interposed in the way of itspresumed direction of change.

nepotism, and favors to actions that, under the formal rules of the institutional package of

polyarchy, would be considered corrupt.xxx

Particularism—like its counterpart, neopatrimonialxxxi and delegative conceptions and

practices of rule—is antagonistic to one of the main aspects of the full institutional package of

polyarchy: the behavioral, legal, and normative distinction between a public and a private sphere.

This distinction is an important aspect of the formal institutionalization of polyarchy. Individuals

performing roles in political and, in general, state institutions are not supposed to be guided by

particularistic motives but by universalistic orientations to some version of the public good. The

boundaries between the public and the private are often blurred in the old polyarchies. But the

very notion of the boundary is broadly accepted and, sometimes, vigorously asserted when it

seems breached by public officials acting from particularistic motives. In cases where particularism

is pervasive, this notion is weaker, less widely held, and seldom enforced.

But polyarchy matters, even in the institutional spheres that, against their formal rules, are

dominated by particularism. There, in congress, the judiciary, and some actions of the executive,

rituals and discourses are performed as if the formal rules were the main guides of behavior. The

consequences are twofold. On one side, by paying tribute to the formal rules, these rituals and

discourses facilitate social and political demands that these rules should be truly followed and that

more public-oriented governmental behavior should prevail. On the other side, the blatant

hypocrisy of many of these rituals and discourses breeds cynicism toward the institutions of

polyarchy, their incumbents, and ‘politicians’ in general. As long as this second consequence is

highly visible, particularism is taken for granted, and practiced, as the main way of access to and of

exercise of political power. Particularism is an important component of the political regime these

polyarchies are.xxxii Polyarchies are regimes, but not all polyarchies are the same kind of regime.

xxx Perhaps it bears insisting that formally institutionalized polyarchies are not exempt fromparticularistic relationships. I am pointing out matters of degree that seem large enough to requireconceptual recognition. One important indication of these differences is the extraordinaryleniency with which, in informally institutionalized polyarchies, political leaders, most of publicopinion, and even courts treat situations that in the other polyarchies would be considered asentailing very severe conflicts of interest.xxxi For a discussion of this topic, see my “Transitions, Continuities, and Paradoxes” inMainwaring et al., op. cit. (n. 3), 17–56. An interesting recent discussion of neopatrimonialism isJonathan Hartlyn’s “Crisis-Ridden Elections (Again) in the Dominican Republic:Neopatrimonialism, Presidentialism, and Weak Electoral Oversight,” Journal of Interamerican andWorld Affairs 34, #4 (Winter 1994) 91–144.xxxii By regime I mean “the set of effectively prevailing patterns (not necessarily legally formalized)that establish the modalities of recruitment and access to governmental roles, and the permissibleresources that form the basis for expectations of access to such roles,” as defined in myBureaucratic Authoritarianism: Argentina, 1966–1973, in Comparative Perspective (Berkeley:University of California Press, 1988) 6. Gerardo Munck “Political Regime, Transition, and

Here we see the ambiguity of the assertion made by Juan Linz, Adam Przeworski,xxxiii

and others, when they argue that consolidation occurs when “democracy becomes the only game

in town.” It is clear that these authors are referring to the formal rules of polyarchy. More generally,

even though they may not refer to ‘institutionalization,’ authors who limit themselves to the term

‘consolidation’ also assert, more or less implicitly, the same close fit between formal rules and

actual behavior.xxxiv For example, Przeworski argues that democratic consolidation occurs

“when no one can imagine acting outside the democratic institutions.” But this does not preclude

the possibility that the games played ‘inside’ the democratic institutions are different from the

ones dictated by their formal rules. Przeworski also states: “To put it somewhat more technically,

democracy is consolidated when compliance—acting within the institutional

framework—constitutes the equilibrium of the decentralized strategies of all the relevant

forces.”xxxv Clearly, Przeworski is assuming that there is only one equilibrium, the one

generated by a close fit between formal rules and behavior. However, even though it is inferior in

terms of performances and outcomes that we value, the situation I am describing may be an

equilibrium, too.xxxvi

A Theoretical Limbo

If more or less explicitly the main criterion for democratic consolidation or

institutionalization is a reasonably close fit between formal rules and actual behavior, then what of

Consolidation: Conceptual Issues in Regime Analysis,” paper presented at the 1995 meeting ofthe Latin American Studies Association, Washington, DC, presents an interesting analysis of theconcept of regime and its uses in comparative studies.xxxiii Adam Przeworski, Democracy and the Market: Political and Economic Reforms in EasternEurope and Latin America (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991).xxxiv See, among many others that could be cited, some of them transcribed in Sin, op. cit. (n.19) and in Gunther, Diamandouros, and Puhle, op. cit. (n. 24), the definition of democraticconsolidation that the latter authors propose: “Consolidation...refers to the achievement ofsubstantial attitudinal support for and behavioral compliance with the new democratic institutionsand the rules which they establish” (3; a more expanded but equivalent definition is offered on 7).xxxv Przeworski, Democracy and the Market, op. cit. (n. 33), 26.xxxvi In another influential discussion, Philippe Schmitter, although he does not use thislanguage, expresses a similar view of democratic consolidation; see “Dangers and Dilemmas ofDemocracy,” op. cit. (n. 9). Schmitter begins by asserting that “In South America, EasternEurope, and Asia the specter haunting the transition is...nonconsolidation... These countries are‘doomed’ to remain democratic almost by default.” He acknowledges that the attributes ofpolyarchy may hold in these countries—but these “patterns never quite crystallize” (60–61). Tosay that democracy exists “almost by default” (i.e., is negatively defined) and is not “crystallized”(i.e., not formally institutionalized) is another way of stating the generalized view that I amdiscussing.

countries such as Italy, Japan, and India? These are long-enduring polyarchies where, by all

indications, various forms of particularism are rampant. Yet these cases are not seen as

problematic by the literature I am discussing. That they are listed as ‘consolidated’ (or, at least, not

listed as ‘unconsolidated’) suggests the strength—and the inconsistency—of this view. It

attaches the label ‘consolidated’ to cases that clearly do not fit its arguments but that have

endured for a significantly longer period than the new polyarchies have so far. This is a typical

paradigmatic anomaly. It deals with these cases by relegating them to a theoretical limbo,xxxvii as

if, because they are somehow considered to be ‘consolidated,’ their big gaps between formal

rules and behavior were irrelevant. This is a pity, because theoretically and empirically important

variations for the study of the whole set of existing polyarchies are thereby obscured.

Another confusing issue is who should adhere to the formal rules, and to what extent, for

democracy to consolidate—the requirement of ‘legitimacy’ that some definitions add. Here the

literature oscillates between holding that only certain leaders need adhere to democratic

principles and arguing that most of the country’s people should be democrats, and between

requiring normative acceptance of these principles and resting content with a mere perception

that there is no feasible alternative to democracy. The scope of this adherence is also

problematic: is it enough that it refers to the formal institutions of the regime, or should it extend

to other areas, such as a broadly shared democratic political culture?

Given these conceptual quandaries, it is not surprising that it is impossible to clearly

specify when a democracy has become ‘consolidated.’ To illustrate this point, consider the ‘tests’

of democratic consolidation that Gunther, Diamandouros, and Puhle propose. These tests

supposedly help them to differentiate the consolidated Southern European cases from the

unconsolidated Latin American, as well as East European and Asian, ones. The indicators that

“may constitute evidence that a regime is consolidated” are: 1) “alternation in power between

former rivals”xxxviii; 2) “continued widespread support and stability during times of extreme

xxxvii An exception is Gunther, Diamandouros, and Puhle, op. cit. (n. 24), where Italy is one ofthe four cases studied. But the way they deal with recent events in Italy is exemplary of theconceptual problems I am discussing. They assert that in Italy “...several important partialregimes...were challenged, became deconsolidated, and entered into a significant process ofrestructuring beginning in 1991” (19). On the same page the reader learns that these partialregimes include nothing less than “the electoral system, the party system, and the structure of thestate itself.” (Added to this list later on is “the basic nature of executive-legislative relations”[394]). Yet the “Italian democracy remains strong and resilient”—after practically almost everyimportant aspect of its regime, and even of the state, have become ‘deconsolidated’ (412). If theauthors mean that, in spite of a severe crisis, the Italian polyarchy is likely to endure, I agree.xxxviii Actually, these authors are ambiguous about this first ‘test.’ On the same page of the textI have just transcribed (12) they assert that they “reject [peaceful alternation in government

economic hardship”; 3) “successful defeat and punishment of a handful of strategically placed

rebels”; 4) “regime stability in the face of a radical restructuring of the party system”; and 5) “the

absence of a politically significant antisystem party or social movement” (12–13).

With respect to Latin America, it bears commenting in relation to each of these points that:

1) alternations in power (i.e., in government) through peaceful electoral processes have occurred

in Latin America as frequently as in Southern Europe; 2) in the former, support for regime stability

has persisted—in Argentina, Brazil, and Bolivia, among other countries—even in the face of far

more acute recessions than Southern Europe has seen, and in the midst of quadruple-digit

inflation; 3) the record of punishment is poor, albeit with important exceptions, in both regions; 4)

even when thinking about Italy today, it is hard to imagine party-system restructurings more radical

than the ones that occurred in Bolivia, Brazil, and Ecuador; and 5) ‘antisystem’ political parties are

as absent from the Latin American as from the Southern European polyarchies. The indicators of

democratic consolidation invoked by these authors (and shared by many others) suffer from

extreme ambiguity.xxxix Pushing their argument to its reductio ad absurdum one could argue

that the Latin American polyarchies are ‘more consolidated’ because they have endured more

‘severe tests’ (12) than the Southern European ones...

Polyarchies, Particularism, and Accountability

It goes almost without saying that all actual cases exhibit various combinations of

universalism and particularism across various relevant dimensions. This observation, however,

should not lead to the Procrustean solution of lumping all cases together; differences in the

degree to which each case approximates either pole may justify their separate classification and

analysis. Of course, one may for various reasons prefer a political process that adheres quite

closely to the formal rules of the full institutional package of polyarchy. However, there exist

polyarchies—some of them as old as Italy, India, and Japan and, in Latin America, Colombia and

Venezuela—that endure even though they do not function as their formal rules dictate. To

between parties that were once bitter rivals] as a prerequisite for regarding a regime asconsolidated...” (emphasis added).xxxix For example, in this volume we are given three different dates for when Greece became aconsolidated democracy, in addition to the—for me, at least—highly counterintuitive assertionthat the Greek democracy became almost instantaneously consolidated, while Italy took aboutthree decades to achieve such a fortunate state; ibid., 22 and 412. In this text the problem isfurther compounded by the use of categories such as “partial consolidation” and “sufficientconsolidation” that, in some of the southern European cases according to these authors,preceded “full consolidation,” as well as a stage of “democratic persistence” that is supposed tofollow after the achievement of “full [democratic] consolidation.”

understand these cases we need to know which are the games actually played and under what

rules.

In many countries, East and South, there is an old and deep split between the pays réel

and the pays légal . This split has obsessed many generations of intellectuals, beginning in

France and then spreading into most of the world together with capitalism and modernity.xl

Today, with many of these countries claiming to be democracies and adopting a constitutional

framework, the persistence and high visibility of this split may not threaten the survival of their

polyarchies—but neither does it facilitate overcoming the split. Institutions are resilient, especially

when they have deep historical roots; particularism is no exception. Particularism is a permanent

feature of human society; only recently, and only in some places and institutional sites, has it been

tempered by universalistic norms and rules. In many new polyarchies particularism vigorously

inhabits most formal political institutions, yet the incumbency of top governmental posts is

decided by the universalistic process of fairly counting each vote as one vote. This may sound

paradoxical but it is not; it means that these are polyarchies, but they are neither the ones that the

theory of democracy had in mind when it grew as a reflection on the political regimes of the

Northwest nor what many studies of democratization assume a democracy should be or become.

That some polyarchies are informally institutionalized has important consequences. Here

I want to stress one that is closely related to the blurring of the boundary between the private and

the public spheres: accountability, a crucial aspect of formally institutionalized polyarchy, is

seriously hindered. To be sure, the institutionalization of elections means that retrospective

electoral accountability exists,xli and a reasonably free press and various active segments of

society see to it that some egregiously unlawful acts of governments are exposed (if seldom

punished). Polyarchy, even if not formally institutionalized, marks a huge improvement over

authoritarian regimes of all kinds. However, what is largely lacking is another dimension of

accountability that I call ‘horizontal.’ By this I mean the controls that state agencies are supposed

to exercise over other state agencies. Whether they are parliamentary or presidentialist, unitary or

federalist, and whether or not they have a constitutional division of powers, all formally

institutionalized polyarchies include various agencies endowed with legally defined authority to

sanction unlawful or otherwise inappropriate actions by other state agents. This is an often-

overlooked expression of the rule of law in one of the areas where it is hardest to implant, i.e., over

xl Many libraries could be filled with these often passionate discussions. Among Anglo-Saxonpolitical scientists arguably the classic piece is Douglas A. Chalmers, “The Politicized State in LatinAmerica,” in James Malloy, ed., Authoritarianism and Corporatism in Latin America (Pittsburgh:Pittsburgh University Press, 1977) 23–46.xli And functions, judging by the high turnover of parties in office in many of these polyarchies.

state agents, especially high-rankings officials. The basic idea is that formal institutions have well-

defined, legally established boundaries that delimit the proper exercise of their authority, and that

there are state agencies empowered to control and redress trespasses of these boundaries by

any official or agency.xlii These boundaries are closely related to the private-public boundary, in

that those who perform roles in the latter sphere are supposed to follow universalistic and public-

oriented rules, rather than their particular interests. Even though its actual functioning is far from

perfect, this network of boundaries and accountabilities is an important component of the formal

institutionalization of the full package of polyarchy.xliii

By contrast, little horizontal accountability exists in most new polyarchies. Furthermore, in

many of the latter the executive makes strenuous, and often successful, efforts to erode

whatever horizontal accountability does exist. The combination of institutionalized elections,

particularism as a dominant political institution, and a big gap between the formal rules and the way

most political institutions actually work makes for a strong affinity with delegative, not

representative, notions of political authority. By this I mean a caesaristic, plebiscitarian executive

that, once elected, sees itself as empowered to govern the country as it deems fit. Reinforced by

the urgencies of severe socioeconomic crises and consonant with old völkisch, nonindividualistic

conceptions of politics, delegative practices strive headlong against formal political

institutionalization; congress, the judiciary, and various state agencies of control are seen as

hindrances placed in the way of the proper discharge of the tasks that the voters have delegated

to the executive. The executive’s efforts to weaken these institutions, invade their legal authority,

and lower their prestige are a logical corollary of this view.xliv On the other hand, as Max Weber

xlii This is not just a one-to-one relationship between a controlling and a controlled agency. It isan overall characteristic of the legal system as applied to the functioning of the state, regime, andgovernment. This is another topic that I will elaborate in future publications.xliii I may have sounded naive in my earlier comments about how individuals performing publicroles are supposed to be guided by universalistic orientations to some version of the public good.Now I can add that, as the authors of the Federalist Papers well knew, this is not only, or evenmostly, a matter of the autonomous subjective orientations of these individuals. It is to a largeextent contingent on institutional arrangements of control and accountability, and onexpectations built around these arrangements, which furnish incentives (including the threat ofsevere sanctions and public discredit) for that kind of behavior. That these incentives are ofteninsufficient should not blur the difference from cases where the institutional arrangements arenonexistent or ineffective; these situations freely invite the huge temptations that always comewith holding political power. I thank Adam Przeworski and Michael Coppedge for raising this pointin private communications.xliv The reader has surely noticed that I am referring to countries that have presidentialist regimesand that, consequently, I am glossing over the arguments, initiated by Juan Linz and followed upby a number of scholars, about the advantages of parliamentarism over the presidentialist regimesthat characterize Latin America. Although these arguments convince me in the abstract, because

warned, institutions deprived of real power and responsibility tend to act in ways that seem to

confirm the reasons adduced for this deprivation. In the cases that concern us here, particularism

becomes even more rampant in congress and parties, courts conspicuously fail to administer

justice, and agencies of control are eliminated or reduced to passivity. This context encourages

further erosion of legally established authority, makes even more tenuous the public-private

boundary, and creates huge temptations for corruption.

In this sea of particularism and blurred boundaries, why does the universalistic process of

fair and competitive elections survive? Governments willing to tamper with laws are hardly solid

guarantors of the integrity of electoral processes. Part of the answer, at least with respect to

elections to top national positions, is close international attention and wide reporting abroad of

electoral irregularities. Fair elections are the main, if not the only, characteristic that certifies

countries as democratic before other governments and international opinion. Nowadays this

certification has important advantages for countries and for those who govern them.xlv Within the

country, elections are a moment when something similar to horizontal accountability operates:

parties other than the one in government are present at the polling places, sharing an interest in

preventing fraud. Elections create a sharp focus on political matters and on the symbols and

rituals that surround the act of voting. At this moment, the citizens’ sense of basic fairness

probably manifests itself with special intensity. Violations are likely to be immediately reported.

Faced with the protests that might ensue and their repercussions in the international media, and

considering the further damage that would come from trying to impose obviously tainted results,

most governments are willing to run the risks inherent in fair and competitive elections.

Pervasive particularism, delegative rule, and weak horizontal accountability have at least

two negative consequences worth mentioning. The first is that the generalized lack of controls

licenses old authoritarian practices to reassert themselves.xlvi The second is that, in countries

of the very characteristics I am depicting I am skeptical about the practical consequences ofattempting to implant parliamentarism in these countries.xlv As seen, for example, in the condonation, by most major powers, of the coups perpetratedby democratically elected presidents Yeltsin and Fujimori. There were, to be sure, importantreasons of real politik behind this condonation, especially in relation to Russia. But this onlyunderlines the decisiveness of this purely electoral criterion for certifying, vis-à-vis powerful actorsin the international arena, not only the existence but also the continuation of polyarchy, evenwhen other of its attributes have been blatantly suppressed.xlvi For analyses of some of these situations, see Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, “The Legacy ofAuthoritarianism in Democratic Brazil,” in Stuart S. Nagel, ed., Latin American Development andPublic Policy (New York: St. Martin’s Press 1995) 237-53; and Martha K. Huggins, ed., Vigilantismand the State in Modern Latin America. Essays on Extralegal Violence (New York: Praeger, 1991).See also the worrisome analysis that, based on data from Freedom House, Diamond presents in“Democracy in Latin America,” op. cit. (n. 2); in recent years more Latin American countries haveregressed than advanced in the freedom indexes presented by that source and elaborated by

that inaugurated their polyarchies under conditions of sharp and increasing inequality, the making

and implementation of policy becomes further biased in favor of highly organized and

economically powerful interests.

In the countries that occupy us here, the more properly political, democratic freedoms are

effective: uncoerced voting, freedom of opinion, movement, and association, and others already

listed. But for large sections of the population, basic liberal freedoms are denied or recurrently

trampled. The rights of battered women to sue their husbands and of peasants to obtain a fair trial

against their landlords, the inviolability of domiciles in poor neighborhoods, and in general the

right of the poor and various minorities to decent treatment and fair access to public agencies and

courts are often denied. The effectiveness of the whole ensemble of rights, democratic and

liberal, makes for full civil and political citizenship. In many of the new polyarchies, individuals are

citizens in relation to the only institution that functions close to what its formal rules prescribe:

elections. As for full citizenship, only the members of a privileged minority enjoy it.xlvii Formally

institutionalized polyarchies exhibit various mixes of democracy, liberalism, and republicanism

(understood as a view that concurs with liberalism in tracing a public-private distinction but that

adds an ennobling and personally demanding conception of the incumbency of roles in the public

sphere). Informally institutionalized polyarchies are democratic, in the sense just defined; when

they add, as they often do, the plebiscitarian component of delegative rule, they are also strongly

majoritarian. But their liberal and republican components are extremely weak.

Freeing Ourselves from Some Illusions

I have rapidly covered a complicated terrain.xlviii Lest there be any misunderstanding, let

me insist that I, too, prefer situations that get close to real observance of the formal rules of

Diamond. I discuss various aspects of the resulting obliteration of the rule of law and weakenedcitizenship in “On the State, Democratization, and Some Conceptual Problems: A Latin AmericanView with Glances at Some Post-Communist Countries,” World Development 21, #8 (1993)1355–69.xlvii There is a huge adjacent theme that I will not discuss here: the interrelations of theseproblems with widespread poverty and, even more, with deep inequalities of various sorts.xlviii Obviously, we need analyses more nuanced, comprehensive, and dynamic than the one Ihave undertaken here. My own list of topics meriting much further study includes: theopportunities that may be entailed by demands for more universalistic and public-orientedgovernmental behavior; the odd coexistence of pervasive particularism with highly technocraticmodes of decision-making in economic policy; the effects of international demands (especiallyregarding corruption and uncertainty in lawmaking and adjudication) that the behavior of publicofficials should conform more closely to the formal rules; and the disaggregation of various kindsand institutional sites of clientelism and particularism. Another major issue that I cannot discusshere, raised to me by Larry Diamond in a personal communication, is locating the point at which

polyarchy, a citizenry that firmly approves democratic procedures and values, fair application of the

law in all social and geographical locations, and low inequality. Precisely because of this

preference I have argued for the need to improve our conceptual tools in the complex task of

studying and comparing the whole set of existing polyarchies. It is through a nonteleological and,

indeed, nonethnocentric, positive analysis of the main traits of these polyarchies that we scholars

can contribute to their much needed improvement. This is especially true of the polyarchies that

are institutionalized in ways we dislike and often overlook—even if they do not, and some of them

may never, closely resemble the ‘consolidated democracies’ of the Northwest.

For this purpose, I believe that we must begin by freeing ourselves from some illusions.

As an author who has committed most of the mistakes I criticize here, I suspect that we students of

democratization are still swayed by the mood of times that many countries have more or less

recently passed through. We believe that democracy, even in the rather modest guise of political

democracy or polyarchy, is vastly preferable to the assortment of authoritarian regimes that it has

replaced. We shared in the joy when those regimes gave way, and some of us participated in

these historic events. These were moments of huge enthusiasm and hope. Multitudes

demanded democracy, and international opinion supported them. The demand for democracy

had many meanings, but in all cases it had a powerful common denominator: “Never Again!”xlix

Whatever confused, utopian, or limited ideas each one held concerning democracy, it was clear

that it meant getting rid of the despots once and for all. DEMOCRACY, even if or perhaps

because it had so many different meanings attached to it, was the central mobilizing demand of

what had to be achieved and preserved forever. Somehow, it was felt, soon this democracy

would resemble the democracies of the admired countries of the Northwest—admired for their

long-enduring regimes and for their wealth, and because both things seemed to go together. As

in these countries, after the transition democracy was to be stabilized, or consolidated; the

Northwest was seen as the end-point of a trajectory that would be largely traversed by getting rid

of the authoritarian rulers. This illusion was extremely useful during the hard and uncertain times

violations of liberal rights should be construed as cancelling, or making ineffective, the politicalfreedoms surrounding elections. Finally, Philippe Schmitter makes an argument worth exploringwhen he urges that polyarchies should be disaggregated into various “partial regimes”; most ofthese would surely look quite different when comparing formally vs. informally institutionalizedcases. See Schmitter, “The Consolidation of Democracy and Representation of Social Groups,”American Behavioral Scientist 35, #4 & 5 (March/June 1992) 422–49.xlix This is the title of the reports of the commissions that investigated human rights violations inArgentina and Brazil. For further discussion of what I call a dominant antiauthoritarian mood in thetransitions, see my “Transitions, Continuities, and Paradoxes,” op. cit. (ns. 3 and 31); and NancyBermeo, “Democracy and the Lessons of Dictatorship,” Comparative Politics , 24 (April 1992)273–91.

of the transition. Its residues are still strong enough to make of democracy and consolidation

powerful, and consequently pragmatically valid, terms of political discourse.l Their analytical

cogency is another matter.

On the other hand, because the values that inspired the demands for democracy are as

important as ever, the present text is an effort toward opening more disciplined avenues for the

study of a topic—and a concern—I share with most of the authors I have discussed: the quality, in

some cases rather dismal, of the social life that is interwoven with the workings of various types of

polyarchy. How this quality might be improved depends in part on how realistically we understand

the past and present situation of each case.

l Symptomatically illustrating the residues of the language and the hopes of the transition aswell as the mutual influences between political and academic discourses, on several occasionsthe governments of the countries I know more closely (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay)triumphantly proclaimed that their democracies had ‘consolidated.’